This invention relates to improved hardware for mounting a shelf unit reversibly within a cabinet structure.
Kitchen cabinets and the like typically include a cabinet enclosure with a series of shelves mounted therein. The depth of such shelves may be limited in view of the reach required to obtain access to the back side of the shelves. For this reason, quite often kitchen cabinets are of limited depth and often do not adequately utilize the available space.
In an effort to overcome this difficulty, the present inventor developed a reversible shelf assembly. The shelf assembly includes an integral shelf unit having pivot supports. Followers along the top and the bottom of the shelf unit cooperate with tracks and grooves cut into the top panel and bottom panel of the cabinet enclosure. The grooves serve to guide the movement of the shelf unit. A construction of this general type has heretofore been manufactured and sold as part of cabinet structure in the dominion of Canada. So far as applicant knows, no sales or disclosure of the described reversible shelf construction have occurred in the United States. The referenced disclosures and sales in Canada did, however, occur, more than a year prior to the filing date of this application.
With respect to the particular cabinet construction just described, various disadvantages were observed. For example, during manufacture of the reversible shelf cabinets, grooves would necessarily need to be cut in the cabinet enclosure. Machining operations associated with such groove cutting were expensive, tedious and did not necessarily provide a proper groove arrangement for mounting the shelf unit. However, once the unit was completely manufactured and assembled, it worked quite well.
In order to overcome difficulties associated with the manufacture of a reversible shelf construction for a cabinet, the present invention was developed. The invention relates to a kit of hardware which may be combined with a shelf unit for mounting that shelf unit within a cabinet so that the shelf unit is reversible. The hardware of the present invention requires no special cutting operations or other work to be performed upon the cabinet. The hardware is merely mounted within the cabinet for cooperation with a shelf unit.